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If all goes as planned, the Bloom-Carroll girls basketball team will take the home floor next
Thursday - in the first event in the high-school gym since summer.

That's when the gym's floorboards began to warp and mercury levels were detected in the
subfloor.

Replacing the 20-year-old gym floor has cost the struggling district $350,000, and $100,000 of
that was for removing high levels of mercury, lead and cadmium found in the polymer subfloor, said
school Treasurer Travis Bigam.

At least 10 boys and girls basketball games and 20 girls volleyball games were moved elsewhere
since the problems were found, costing the district an estimated $3,500 in rental fees to other
districts.

The district also lost at least $6,000 in ticket sales for what would have been home games,
Bigam said.

As many as a third of the 600 or so polyurethane gymnasium floors in Ohio schools might have
dangerous mercury levels, according to estimates by a Dublin company that tests them.

But unless they're renovating, few districts would know the risks. The floors were installed
from the mid-1960s to mid-'70s, and many of them had wood floors built over top.

The Fairfield County district, with a budget of $15 million, will begin construction on March 2
of a new middle school on the high-school grounds, which will give the schools two new gyms where
it has had none. The old middle school's gym had been unusable because of age and disrepair.

Groundwater under the gym floor was found to be the cause of the warping problem and has been
diverted, Bigam said.

Two insurance claims to pay for the damage were denied, because the problems couldn't be traced
to a single source, he added. Money collected from a November 2009 bond issue will pay for the
damage.

Officials are glad the ordeal is over.

"The timing was very unfortunate," said board member Monica Hatfield Price. "With all of our
indoor sports occurring, it inconvenienced not only student athletes but students participating in
physical education.

"To have things contained in their own buildings now is a basic service to be expected."